After one of the easiest flights I've ever taken (apparently many people use the route as a commuter line!) I landed in pretty Cork the for the conference; this year's title was 'The Continuum'.

I had the opportunity to present yet another poster! This time evaluating the sedation service provided at one the hospitals I work at: The Royal Hospital for Neurodisability. I will blog more about this hospital in the future as it is pretty unique - seeing patients with brain injuries and the hospital is in fact a charity, not an NHS trust! 

I looked at the sedation we provide for some of the patients who require interventional dental treatment who cannot tolerate treatment under local anaesthetic, such as those who do not cooperate or have limited mouth opening. 

To see my poster, click here. 

I was thrilled to find out I won the poster prize for this presentation! Huge thanks to my Educational Supervisor for helping me put this together... (a bit last minute as usual!).

As well as poster presentations, there were plenty of interesting talks surrounding sedation, patient anxiety and general anaesthesia. After the fire alarm interupted things (never seen that before at a conference), the speakers did really well to recover and stick to time so that those of us flying back to London could catch our flight!!

Here are some of top learning points from the day:

• There has been evidence from medicine suggesting there is no inceased risk of adverse events in sedation (endoscopy study) for patients who suffer from sleep apnoea
• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy aims to change beliefs and thoughts (via education/re-addressing throughts) and changing behaviour. This can be through graded, focused, repeated and prolonged exposure to a fear until habitatution occurs. There are current studies at Guy's Hospital where this is done via Virtual Reality headsets
• Recently in the USA, Dental Anaesthesiology is now a recognised dental specialty
• Patients with cochlear implants are contra-indicated for treatment under nitrous  oxide sedation as they can get a build up of pressure in the ear, which results in pain
• Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas! 0.35-2% of its release is due to medical and dental use
• A trick to measure up a nasopharyngeal airway is to use the patient's little finger...its diameter should be the same
• Capnography (carbon dioxide monitoring) can show airway obstrutions much earlier than a pulse oximeter because oxygen saturation measurements are taken peripherally